It was July 23, 2000, when authorities say a woman walking in Holland, Massachusetts, was approached and sexually assaulted.
State and local police scoured the area, but it didn’t lead to an arrest. That is, until samples processed in a private lab two decades later gave authorities a lead.
“For the first time, forensic investigative genetic genealogy has contributed to the arrest of an offender,” Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said Wednesday as he detailed the arrest of 48-year-old Jamie Dodge. “This technology is a significant investigative tool, and it will be utilized with greater frequency and will continue to yield great results.”
Gulluni said Dodge had been living in Brownville, Maine, but had connections to Holland – a small town of 2,600 people near Sturbridge, and bordering Connecticut.
According to the DA, forensic testing in 2001 led to a DNA profile being created, which was then uploaded to a national database.
However, Gulluni said comparing the results against offender profiles in the CODIS database never yielded a match.
Years later, though, the district attorney’s office worked with Parabon NanoLabs in Reston, Virgina, to conduct “phenotyping and forensic investigative genetic genealogy” involving the profile.
Those results led to this week's arrest.
“Following up on the reported physical characteristics and investigative leads provided from Parabon’s forensic analysis, my office's Unresolved Cases unit identified and located the suspected offender,” he said. “These efforts culminated just last week, when a Hampden County grand jury returned indictments charging Jamie Dodge with aggravated rape and kidnapping.”
Dodge was apprehended in Ware, Massachusetts, on May 7. He was arraigned the next day and ordered held on $250,000 cash bail.
Exact details on the investigative leads were not described by the DA’s office, though Gulluni dived into what goes into forensic genetic genealogy as an investigative tool.
He referenced one of the most high-profile cases to use it – the 2018 arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., also known as “The Golden State Killer.”
The 78-year-old was charged with at least 13 murders in California decades after the crimes, thanks to genetic genealogy testing of DNA evidence.
“Essentially, it uses folks’ profiles that have made it into a database that is lawfully accessed by law enforcement and analysts, who are specialized in this field, can take segments of an unknown profile and then compare it to other known profiles and figure out, essentially, a family tree, and determine that there are relatives to a particular person who is your offender,” He said. “And it's miraculous stuff.”
While not identifying the victim of the 2000 sexual assault, describing her only as an adult woman, Gulluni says his office had been in touch with her over the past year, including the latest developments.
He noted that while she has found ways to cope with the trauma of the assault, she will likely have to confront the experience as proceedings continue.
“She'll have to be involved at certain times, and that's going to cause her to relive this in many ways, but we're going to support her,” the district attorney said. “We understand, and I think she understands, that this is important to keep other people safe and I think she believes it's important for her own sense of justice.”
Dodge is expected to appear in court again on July 11.
